


Reaching Out

by satterthwaite



Category: The Hour
Genre: Air Raid - Freeform, Bombing, F/M, I wanted to give Sophia a plausible death, Phoney War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satterthwaite/pseuds/satterthwaite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The telegram is sending her off to Paris, and she can't make up her mind whether she is glad or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Phoney War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diaghileafs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/gifts).



In 1939, the world stops focusing on Spain, and turns its eyes on Poland. 

At the office there is a constant haze of journalists leaving and coming, after all those months of almost silence. In January, Barcelona fell into Franco's hands, and most of her coworkers flew away to France - but she stayed. The BBC had wanted her out and safe, but Lix argued there were still good pictures to be taken, and talked them out of moving her. There are attachs she cannot get rid off so easily, it seems. The city still holds a part of her. 

But since Franco signed the Anti-Komitern pact, newspapers are sending their reporters over again, and Lix finds some companions back - most of them are young men (their first job, she has to laugh) who have witnessed nothing of the civil war who opened the country's belly in two and tore in apart. She can read it on their face - they've seen nothing but pictures (some of them she took, it is her pride). She will still shout for them to be careful when out in the streets. 

But the quietness that falls upon the place is getting into her bones, the warmth spreading laziness into her muscles as 24-year-old Lix refuses to leave. She might come face to face with her past, her own self if she gets out of the small flat near the Ramblas, and that is the last thing she wants - not yet. 

Yet the world does not angry, and soon the telegram comes. Must return to London -stop- Extreme tension between England and Germany -stop- Needed here. She sighs, but she packs her suitcase anyways - she still needs a job that pays the rent, and the food, and there is no way she is going to ask for money to anyone. She wonders if he's in England, too - perhaps they sent him in Poland, at the heart of the action. 

Lix is back in England in June 1939 - the negotiations between England, France and Russia just failed, and every home holds their breath. She is asked pictures of soldiers who fought in the trenches, pictures of the families of those who might be sent - so useless, so quiet. She misses the gun shots above her head, the adrenaline running through the veins (even though it is bad for your nerves, the medics told her when they had to heal to gunshot wound in her shoulder). When Hitler invades Poland on September 1st, despite England's warning through the signing of accords with Poland, Lix thinks that perhaps, she is getting another chance of doing what she does best. She is wrong. 

On September 3rd, the war is declared, but the Phoney War is not the war she wants to cover. 

The months that follow are spent in dull waiting - the soldiers on the front line, the families at home, the radio turned on, waiting for news of fights that don't happen. _Sitzkrieg_ , the German calls it she hears - la _Drôle de Guerre_ for the French. It is indeed funny, all those soldiers in their forts deemed impregnable. Lix now knows nothing remains untouched forever. She once knew a girl who thought she was unassailable - until she fell and was left alone. 

When Germany finally invades the Netherlands and Belgium, it almost feels like a relief - she will find work again. 

The BBC sent her off to Brussels at once (she doesn't need to make her proofs as a war photographer anymore) as the English and French troops are rushed to help the Belgian's army fight off. Everybody soon finds out it was but a bait - for the first time in a long while, adrenaline finds her way back into her body. They tell her to go the Ardens, where the fights are taking place - she finds shelter in village, listens to the English radio, translating in her poor French to the folks who takes her in for the night - never more, the fights are quick, the Germans are going so fast, they are breaking the Allies army in two, they will gain the sea in a few days, she has to be there. The people shout  _"C'est la débâcle ! Nous sommes battus !"_ and all the forts fall one after another. In the air she feels the fear, the panick - it is Sevilla, Madrid, Barcelona all over again. She lacks arms wrapping around her in the nights. 

On May 21st, she is dispatched to Ypres, to witness the meeting between the English, French and Belgian commanders. Three days later, the troops are defeated at Dunkerque, and have to be repatriate. The desolation she captures on the beach nears that of those women crying for their children, husbands shouting for their wives. Those men sing songs of home, of honor lost. Belgian capitulation is signed on May 28th - The BBC is sending her to Paris. 


	2. I'll be seeing you

Lix arrives in Paris on the morning of June, 1st. She is expected at the BBC's office - they have some jobs for her : she will cover the war efforts in the several factories in the capital. She sighs - that doesn't sound like much fun to her, but at least she's got work. They will provide her with a small room somewhere in the 14e arrondissement. Lix thinks that anyways, it can't be as worse as the ones she got in Spain.

There is a bed, and some blankets - it seems quite enough for her, but she lacks a room where she could develop her films - she'll have to ask the office about that. But it feels great to have somewhere she can call "hers" - the Belgian fightings only lasted 10 days, but it felt like eternity when spent alone, being rushed from one place to another. Her feet are blistered and she has to bandaged them - but it will be alright, it won't stop her. She decides she won't think about her for as long as she is here - nor about him, it won't do any good. She did what she had to do - that's what she tells herself. 

June, 3rd. Renault factory, Boulogne-Billancourt. Lix has to take pictures of all those women who took up work, compensating for all the men who are now gone to the front lines. Some of them have even taken their child with them - she captures all of this on her films. Some of them are smiling, others have already lost - the first days of this war were bloody and harsh, and will it last as long as the last one ? 

Suddenly the sirens go off, and people drop their tools, leave their machines. They're running aimless and there is nowhere to hide. Some of them shrivel up in corners, others lie in the ground, covering their head. Lix looks around her, and she finds herself being dragged by the moving crowd, following them as they rush themselves against the doors. 

Then the bombs started to fall. 

Lix has seen a lot of things in Spain - but the screams of people like trapped animals, and explosions sending bodies flying, that much is new to her. 

Her first reflex is to grab her camera and take pictures of what is happening, but soon she is knocked over to the floor by people trying to escape this place that is being bombed by the Luftwaffe. She falls on the ground and her first instinct is to cover her head with her hands, trying not to get stamped by the crowd. Some strong arms get her on her feet once again, and she curses at her broken camera. 

That's before the collapsing of the roof. 

There are screams, and blinding pain in her leg, and when she opens her eyes again, she is being pinned to the ground by a metallic beam on her right leg. Around her people scream, and there is that woman - that woman who looks lost amongst ruins as she cries  _"Mon bébé, mon bébé... Aidez-moi..."_ and she looks familiar to Lix but she can't put a name on her face, she can't remember when she saw her. "I can't move !" she cries back "I can't move !" but the sound is muffling by those of bombs still falling, and soon the place is covered by clouds of dust again, and when everything is clear again, and she can see and hear - the woman is lying nearby, dead. 

For the first time in a long time, Lix sobs. 

When they drag her out of the smoking ruins, she can't walk. She tells them in a her poor French that she is a journalist, that she works for the BBC. They reply her leg has been crushed, they will send her back to England by train - while they still can, before the Germans are here for good. Back in London, they tell her she won't be able to walk properly for a little while, and her boss says it's better for her if she stays at home, for now. Later she will learn 200 people died that day. 

\-- 

Lime Grove, 1958. 

When Randall hands her the files about Sophia, she still has so much hope to find her daughter is well and safe somewhere, growing up to be a beautiful young lady of 19. She sits down and reads, and once again it feels like a roof is collapsing on her. 

June 1940, air raid. It feels like a fist around her heart, clenching and tearing it in two. When she reads the characters in italics, _place of death_ , the blow is fatal. She was there. 

"Would you forgive me if I asked you to go ?" She barely hears Randall's words as her eyes closed. She is looking for words to say, but her mind went blank and her lips were dry. 

"I—" she begins, firmly holding her glasses in her fingers. "I can't move" she finally says, and now she remembers why the woman seemed familiar to her. Madame Malfrand.

"I can't move" she repeats. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bombing of the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt is an actual event of World War II, that happened on June, 3rd. I figured out that it was a great way to have Sophia die. 
> 
> Mon bébé, mon bébé... aidez-moi : my baby, my baby... help me.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to be as accurate as possible with the dates and events happening - however, it is hard to really know what was possible or not for a war journalist at that time, so there might be inaccuracies. 
> 
> Sitzkrieg : sitting war  
> Drôle de guerre : funny war  
> C'est la débâcle, nous sommes battus : it's the debacle, we are beaten


End file.
